Two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the Americas on Wednesday, a magnitude 5.6 tremor off Guatemala and a magnitude 4.7 quake off Canada’s Pacific coast, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Guatemala: magnitude 5.6
The stronger of the two struck 43 kilometres south of Puerto San Jose, Guatemala, the USGS reported. Twenty people reported feeling the quake, according to the agency’s felt reports. No tsunami warning was issued for the Guatemalan event in the data available at drafting time.
Canada: magnitude 4.7 off Tofino
The second quake struck 130 kilometres west of Tofino, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, at 01:45 UTC on Wednesday, at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres. The USGS evaluated the event for tsunami risk, and one felt report was recorded.
The Tofino quake was shallow, at 10 kilometres depth, the kind of depth that can generate a tsunami, but the USGS evaluation found no tsunami threat in the data available, and no warning was issued. The Guatemalan quake, at magnitude 5.6, was the stronger of the two, with 20 felt reports recorded by the USGS against a single felt report for the Tofino event. Neither event had produced damage or injury reports by the time the USGS data was published.
A busy week for seismic activity
The two quakes came in a week that also saw a magnitude 6.4 earthquake strike the Solomon Islands and a magnitude 6.1 event off Japan, both recorded by the USGS in the past seven days. The Solomon Islands quake, 30 kilometres west-southwest of Lata, was the strongest of the period and was felt by two people, with a green PAGER alert indicating a low estimated impact. The USGS data also showed a magnitude 5.1 quake in the Balleny Islands region and a magnitude 4.9 event 207 kilometres northwest of Port-Olry, Vanuatu, in the same period, underlining how active the Pacific rim has been this week.
Related reading: Magnitude 6.4 Quake Strikes Solomon Islands as Japan Shakes at 5.7
